EMA Research Reveals Virtualization Best Practices and Effective Virtual Systems Management (VSM) Outcomes

New report provides real-world metrics, guidance to help enterprises
more effectively manage and reap the benefits of virtual systems

BOULDER, Colo., Jan. 21, 2009 – Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a leading IT management research and consulting firm, today announced the release of its latest research paper titled, “Best Practices in Virtual Systems Management (VSM): Virtualization Metrics and Recommendations for Enterprises.” Based on data from an in-depth survey of companies with active virtualization deployments, this report analyzes 18 key VSM disciplines and provides real-world metrics for 17 VSM outcomes. It also categorizes outcomes for the best and worst performers in VSM. The survey indicates that the companies with the best practices in VSM saw substantial staff efficiencies. The best performers were able to manage their virtualization deployments with more than 85 percent fewer administrators.

"Organizations with better VSM achieve measurable business benefits and significant ROI outcomes – like faster time to market for new products and services, improvements to customer service, reduced operational costs, more effective channel and partner capabilities, faster response to business demands and an improved ability to attract and retain the best staff," said Andi Mann, EMA research director and study leader.

Enterprise Management Associates’ research indicates that better response times, faster provisioning and improved efficiency are just of the few improvements seen with the use of specific VSM toolsets and best practices. Additional findings in this report include:

•    Best practices in VSM result in much lower administration costs, with the best performers saving over $3,300 per additional virtual machine (VM) on staff costs alone.

•    Best practices in VSM result in faster problem resolution and better uptime, with the best performers able to achieve an average of ‘five nines’ (99.999 percent) availability – less than one second of downtime per day.

•    Best practices in VSM provide extraordinary advantages for system deployment, with the best performers able to deploy a new system more than 240 times faster.

•    Best practices in VSM greatly improve server consolidation ratios, with the best performers able to reduce the actual number of physical servers in use by 35 percent or more.

•    Best practices in VSM greatly improve resource utilization, with the best performers able to run their virtualization deployment on about half as many physical servers.

•    Best practices in VSM deliver significant results for Green IT initiatives, with the majority of enterprises able to prove a measurable reduction in power consumption since deploying virtualization.

The most successful VSM users have seen solid, measurable results. EMA suggests that enterprises use the advice and findings in this report to measure themselves against their peers, pinpoint their weak spots and start to correct them by deploying better processes. This will not only lead to measurable results for IT, but for the entire business, by allowing virtual systems to expand and deliver on virtualization goals.

Mann will conduct a free Webinar on February 5 to review key findings from the report. Register at: http://www.www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id=1097

To purchase a copy of this report, please visit: http://www.www.enterprisemanagement.com/research/asset.php?id=1104


About Enterprise Management Associates
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst and consulting firm dedicated to the IT management market. The firm provides IT vendors and enterprise IT professionals with objective insight into the real-world business value of long-established and emerging technologies, ranging from security, storage and IT Service Management (ITSM) to the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), virtualization and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Even with its rapid growth, EMA has never lost sight of the client, and continues to offer personalized support and convenient access to its analysts. For more information on the firm’s extensive library of IT management research, free online IT Management Solutions Center and IT consulting offerings, visit www.www.enterprisemanagement.com.